shopping

[dragonlady7]

tag this kind of shit

via https://ift.tt/3mU29Nb

so i am at an intersection of being fucking insane with regards to no longer knowing how to reconcile needs and wants with the spending of money, like a fundamentally broken consumption machine is what i am here, and then you intersect that with the traditional holiday gift-giving season, and my family being generally chill but sort of thoughtlessly so about the concept of gift-giving and obligations in general, and I am currently completely enmeshed in a maybe-i’m-fine stare of paralysis where I keep having Gift Ideas and looking at Gift Idea Websites and putting things maybe into Shopping Carts but also just not actually doing that, and I keep having ideas of things I Ought To Make but that’s tied up in the paralysis of well I have to spend 40 hours a week working plus another ten to twelve hours a week cooking (more?) plus six or seven hours a week working out and people are expected to have leisure but how do you do that and anyway where do I start a project that’s something I haven’t done before? I stand around in my basement and look at the craft materials I have and then I walk away.

Anyhow. I don’t have any executive function of any kind. (I mean, this is fundamentally who I am, as a person; we can blame the fantastic six-month wait I had to be able to get unemployment earlier this year because of a one-digit transposition on a piece of paper six years ago, or we can just accept that this is how God made me, probably, and let the SSA and DOL entirely off the hook.)

But I DID buy my niece a skate helmet. I have purchased one (1) thing so far, for Christmas.

I’m not seeing anyone for the holiday except possibly my mother-not-in-law who as every year has refused to give us a gift list and for whom none of us has any ideas.

Oh I have a stocking stuffer-type gift for Farmsister, who I am also not seeing. (Because Dude found it, because she commented favorably on some thing he owns and he was like “ah! I will buy her one of those as well!” so we did.)

It’s fine, really? Only I don’t know how to be anything else than what I am.

Also I keep seeing things that I want, but the entire concept of wanting things has become completely divorced in my head from the concept of actually acquiring things. I have been wanting a new pair of non-snow-but-winter boots for three years now and have sixteen tabs open in Zappo’s, and the ones I’m wearing have lost all the faux-leather-wrapping from the low heels and are starting to have the soles come detached.

I bought glue, instead, because I got the skate helmet on Amazon (easiest if she needs to return it because I got the wrong one or someone else already bought one) and they have glue there too, so.

Sigh. I finished up the film transfer orders at work early so I don’t have to go in early today and that meant I could take a nap instead of working out yesterday afternoon so when I woke up early this morning I worked out then instead, but now I’m ready to go in and it’s the same time I usually do. I’m forcing myself to sit here and drink coffee and will go in closer to normal time because there is no reason to go on.

OH Non-Responsive Guy is back to work today but we never did hear the results from his covid test. Since he was the only person directly in contact with the infected kid. Who also is coming back, tomorrow, because it’s been three weeks and he’s now tested negative. So i guess really it doesn’t matter?

The NYT has an interactive thing where you can find out how urgently you should be in line for the vaccine and Dude filled it out and got “dead fucking last” which is actually reasonable and he was like yes, that is fine, I have the most work-from-home-able existence of anyone on this earth, I just want to do my part. Which was my point as well. I just want to do my part. I’m afraid of the disease, of course, but what I’m terrified of, what I lose sleep over, is that I would give it to someone. That’s what I most urgently don’t want. Please, vaccinate the healthcare workers, the hospital janitors, the bus drivers, the postal workers, the grocery store clerks– the people keeping us fed and alive and safe and keeping the infrastructure running and whatnot.

You know they’re going to give it to lawyers and stockbrokers first though. You just know it! And then they’re going to insist restaurants be open, even though you know bartenders will get it last. It’s going to become a pageant of serving the wealthy, just like everything else.

Comments

[unicornduke]

I think I convinced my mom to do away with the extended family gift exchange this year. We aren't going to be spending time with them and as it turns out, all the "kids" are out of high school and most of us are out of college and none of us need presents. I think this year is the year to say, maybe let's take a break. On many things. Some years, I gift people baked goods (if they aren't bakers) because sometimes I'm out of ideas.